p-p-p-pie

Bahh, I didn’t break my pact, I’m still baking every day; I just didn’t have the time or motivation to blog about it :P. Whew, holidays are a pain in the ass. Two days before I just couldn’t get ANYTHING right and it all went down from there… burnt two batches of cookies, another two crumbled apart because something in the mix was off, dropped the mixer while assembling the last (saving grace) set of cookie dough, thus making the bowl summersault and a concoction of cookie matter spewing all over me and everything in the vicinity. (wow that sounds pretty gruesome, and rightly so) So on and so on. However, before the suckfest I managed to make chocolate mousse and this beautiful pie crust (pate brisee).

I was pretty happy with the way it came together when it was still uncooked, (those are dragonflies and in the middle is an elephant) even though it was kinda off centered and lopsided. Oh well. Anywho, I made it an apple & cranberry pie. It actually tasted much better with the cranberries, probably because of the added tartness and I love sweet and tart. I didn’t really stick to any recipe in particular, but I did macerate the apples with the spices and sugar for several hours, straining and carmelizing the apple juices, as the master of pastry, Rose Levy, says to do in her pastry bible. All in all it came out fairly well, the crust was tasty, however the bottom was still sorta soggy/undercooked even though I baked it on the bottom of the oven >0 …Next time I’m blind baking it. I couldn’t really get a good picture of the pie, but it looked glorious, I assure you :P…